Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/5380 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: user system Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: ax Updated by: stefan nagtegaal Status: patch I am all for the idea of introducing a special id for running the cronjobs, but the approach you took here is far from perfect imo.. After looking at your patch, there are several questions and remarks that came up to my mind: I agree with Gerhard that the $cron_is_running is probably unneeded, I think it's better todo: <?php if (!variable_get('cron_busy', true)) {   session_start(); } ?> I think that this is much to technical. Severa newbies will probable ask what a user id is, or what cron jobs are.. From both usability and userfriendlyness this patch is a big -1 from me.. I would suggest todo the following: - Make a new user in the db called 'Cron' with a user id -1, or something like that.. That way you don't have to add extra options to the administration, and the way of implementing should be much cleaner. Also does it improves usability... What do you think? stefan nagtegaal Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 24, 2004 - 00:33 : ax we currently have some problems caused by the undefined state of $user in the cause of cron runs. sometimes it's "Anonymous", sometimes it picks up the currently logged in user (i think). I stumbled upon this when reading issues closed by "Anonymous" caused by the automatic cron closure when issues are fixed. i always think "isn't it strange that "Anonymous" can close issues just as she feels like?" there are quite some related issues - search this site for "cron user". couldn't a cron user solve these problems? a la if (REQUEST_URI) == cron.php then $user = <cron_user>, with <cron_user> having some special properties such as showing "Automatically" for closed issues, being possible to excluded in statistics, putting the rss author from imported rss nodes into nodes author field, having special access checks etc. i didn't think about this much, but thought it is worth filing here. please discuss, elaborate - and don't flame me if i'm too off ;) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 11, 2004 - 06:04 : Chris Johnson Sounds like a good idea to me. It's one of many things I'd like to change if I get time to work on it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ September 27, 2004 - 20:25 : Philippe Couln't we just write this in cron.php: <?php $cronuser = variable_get('cron_cronuser','nobody'); if ($cronuser = 'nobody'){   $user = user_load(array()); //I believe this results in Anonymous?? }else{   $user = user_load(array('name' => $cronuser)); } ?> We can set the variable cron_cronuser in a page like admin/cron. If the site administrator doesn't set a value, cron uses Anonymous for everything (not some user that happens to be logged on). If a valid user name is set, the site admin can give the cron user special privileges. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 1, 2004 - 19:41 : Philippe Setting the user like this in cron.php sends a cookie. (How? Where? Can we prevent this?) So everybody can get "cron" privileges by loading cron.php once. We could fix this by making cron.php accessible only from localhost (in .htaccess). Any ideas? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 1, 2004 - 22:11 : Philippe Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/cron_uid.patch (3.62 KB) This patch lets the admin select a UID for cron in the admin/settings page. The variable name in which this is stored is 'cron_uid'. When cron.php is loaded, it sets a variable $cron_is_running. If this variable is set, no session will be opened (and no cookies will be sent). The cron page will use the Anonymous user (uid==0) if cron_uid is not set. Note that the site admin should create a "cron" user before setting the UID. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 20:18 : Chris Johnson Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/cron_uid2.patch (3.19 KB) Previous patch still applies cleanly to HEAD and code algorith looks good on inspection. However, there are some style problems and one ugly bit using StdClass(), so I have re-rolled the patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 20:37 : killes@www.drop.org I like the idea, some comments, though: +if (!$cron_is_running) { + session_start(); +} Is this neccessary? 'User ID '.$cron_uid.' does not exist' ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 21:11 : killes@www.drop.org 'User ID '.$cron_uid.' does not exist' < == needs to be made translatable. Setting to active. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 14, 2005 - 06:56 : Chris Johnson Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/cron_uid3.patch (3.29 KB) Ooops. Sorry I missed that text that needed translating. New patch attached with that bit corrected. Yes, I think the if (!$cron_is_running) code is needed to keep the cron user from creating many unneeded sessions.